Posts Tagged ‘defense budget’

When defense officials rolled out the department’s five-year spending plan in March, they acknowledged it exceeded the 2011 Budget Control Act limits by $116 billion and would require congressional action to relax the caps. The actual cost of funding the Pentagon’s fiscal 2015-2019 budget may require $200 billion to $300 billion in additional spending, however, due to a number of assumptions that are unlikely to be realized, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. One shortcoming of the five-year plan is its failure to fund the force structure called for in the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review and 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance …

The rise of the Islamic State along with other emerging threats could provide an opening for lawmakers to reverse defense cuts, or at least offer the Pentagon additional flexibility to respond to the threats, but it’s not yet clear that such an effort could succeed at this point, budget experts say. As the number of hotspots expands across the globe, talk about various options Congress could pursue to pay for a military response — including ongoing airstrikes in Iraq and possible ones in Syria — has been on the upswing …

The functions and roles of the Air Force’s active-duty, Guard and reserve components will continue to be further integrated, the service’s top officer told several thousand members of the National Guard on Saturday. “If we can become more efficient as an Air Force without losing operational capability, by putting more things in the Air Guard and reserve component, then why wouldn’t we?” Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told the general conference of the National Guard Association of the United States …

Army Undersecretary Brad Carson, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Campbell and other senior Army leaders have been meeting weekly to figure out the best way for the service to address a variety of strategic decisions, including personnel cuts and other changes stemming from stringent spending caps. “The future [decisions] will be about all of the issues you can imagine … from controlling compensation, cyber and the Army strategic planning process,” Carson said of the forums. “There are probably 20 or 30 different budget issues and programming issues that are important in the Army …

While both parties agree on the need to pass a stopgap spending bill in September, a dispute may break out over how long it should last. With the potential for Republicans to gain control of the Senate next year, some House Republicans may push for a fiscal 2015 continuing resolution (CR) to extend until sometime in 2015. Democrats, however, want the stopgap to end in December so lawmakers can hash out a deal on an omnibus after the midterm elections. “This could lead to a real standoff,” a senior House Republican leadership aide told Government Executive …

With the deadline fast approaching for the Chattahoochee Valley to demonstrate its support for Fort Benning, Ga., while the Army considers eliminating up to 70,000 soldiers by 2020, the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce redoubled its effort to boost the number of public comments submitted to the Army. The initiative seems to be working as support for the post has grown ahead of the Aug. 25 deadline established by Army Environmental Command to accept public comments to the supplemental programmatic environmental assessment now under way …

A continuing resolution (CR) needed to keep the federal open starting Oct. 1 likely would provide funding until the middle of December. Extending a stopgap spending bill through the second week of December would allow lawmakers to put off any difficult votes until after the midterm elections while giving House and Senate appropriators time to reach a deal on a fiscal 2015 omnibus, reports CQ. “This could be a lot like last year, it looks like,” House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) said last month ,,,

At a public forum on Monday, officials in northeastern Maryland underscored the need for area residents to both understand how the personnel cuts contemplated for Aberdeen Proving Ground could harm the surrounding community and demonstrate their support for the installation as the Army considers how to eliminate up to 70,000 soldiers for a second time this decade. “We need you to sign this declaration [of support], we need you to submit your comments, and we need you to become an informed defense community,” said Harford County Executive David Craig …

Despite a general breakdown in cooperation between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate that has prevented most significant legislation from advancing, a growing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle believe the chamber will take up the fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill after they return to Capitol Hill following their five-week August recess. The measure last year was prevented from going to the floor because the two sides could not agree on a process for handling amendments, and the potential remains that a similar issue could hold up the National Defense Authorization Act again …

An effort by Senate Appropriations Chair Barbara Mikulski to move the fiscal 2015 military construction-veterans affairs spending bill to the floor without allowing for amendments was rejected, but the Maryland Democrat says she hasn’t yet given up. Senate Republicans wanted the measure considered with amendments and to set aside the supplemental spending bill needed to address the child migration crisis, demands Mikulski could not agree to …